Name: A CEO Explains How AI Impacts the Physical World
Uploaded: 2026-06-18T19:24:00Z
Duration: 19 min 1 s
Description: Lucian Boldea, CEO of Timken, spoke about the artificial intelligence, the economy, acquisitions, and much more with Barron's editor at large Andy Serwer.

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Lucian Boldea, CEO of Timken, spoke about the artificial intelligence, the economy, acquisitions, and much more with Barron's editor at large Andy Serwer.

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A CEO Explains How AI Impacts the Physical World

Hello, everyone, and welcome to "At Barron's." I'm Andy Serwer, and welcome to our guest, Lucian Boldea, CEO of the Timken Company. Lucian, great to see you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

So Timken, a longstanding company famous for roller bearings out of Canton, Ohio. What are you up to these days though? The company, I'm sure, has evolved and has different lines of businesses beyond that.

Absolutely, as you alluded to it, this is a 125-year-old company that started its life as a bearings company, and it's now really an advanced motion technology company. So we started from bearings, and over the last 10 years, we've done about 14 different acquisitions in this space of advanced motion. So really building out an industrial motion portfolio. And what we've announced recently at Investor Day is a new strategy and how we're really pivoting and transforming the company from a component supplier, which is what you are when you're a bearing supplier, to really a systems supplier and engineered systems, which is where we're moving with our industrial motion portfolio.

Okay, so who are the end customers here, Lucian, for those systems, and how are you making that transition?

So they're the same customers that we've had historically. We're just engaging with them in a different way through these businesses. So we're able to be more than a component supplier, really speaking to a buyer that's buying a component, to really solving a problem, designing a system for them. So it really elevates the relationship that we have, but it's really in the same verticals with the same large customers that we've worked with for decades.

And what are some examples of those customers? What types of customers? What are the actual applications?

Right, so it's the household names. So when you think about our focus verticals, we're in aerospace and defense, so they're the airframe manufacturers that you can think of. And if you think about off-highway agricultural producers of large machinery like combines, like tractors, or for infrastructure, excavator producers, bulldozers, so it's the name brands in those spaces that we work with.

Right, so for those who are not familiar with roller bearings and roller bearing systems, so when you're talking about these large machines, like exactly where do these go and how does that work?

Yeah, so the difference between a ball bearing that we're all familiar with and a taper roller bearing is really the design that allows you, in the same space, to really take much more load, to really have something that's much more durable lasts a lot longer. So if you have really extreme operating conditions, so you go from a passenger rail car to a freight rail car that carries mining or iron ore or something like that, that's a tremendous amount of weight. Failure is not an option. So that's where you go to a taper roller bearing. Originally in cars, when cars were heavier before they got light-weighted, they would have tapers in them. Now, they can have more ball bearings than they had before. Hence, our footprint is now more in these high-demand industries such as rail, freight rail in particular. Wind energy is another one, and less so in automotive where the requirements are less.

I think if someone was selling this, it's sort of like everything that moves, movement, machinery that has movement is kind of integral part in a way.

Yeah, I mean really, a bearing reduces friction and enables movement at the end of the day, but a taper does that with much higher load in a much smaller real estate than a normal conventional bearing.

And you talked about these acquisition solution. I mean, how do you go about identifying these companies and making sure you're getting an ROI?

Yeah, look, you can think in very simple terms in terms of what an acquisition is, and I have this mental model I've used all my life, which is if you think about three different circles of acquisitions. First of all, you wanna start with an inherently good company, a good business. So you wanna look for the universe of good companies. They have good five forces, they're in good markets, they have credibility with their customers. So that's one criteria. The second criteria is they're actionable, they're for sale, and we can afford them, because otherwise, we're just dreaming. And then the third criteria, which is equally important, is we are the natural owner. If we can't uniquely make that business better, then somebody else can, and somebody else will pay more, and somebody else should own that business. And so that's the philosophy by which we approach all acquisitions. It's a very simple screen you could explain to a high school class, but it's really very basic and it really works. And the other thing I would add to that is that same screen applies to what we have, because if we wouldn't buy it, why are we keeping it? You know, it's the same argument. So really, we're very disciplined about our portfolio using those criteria.

And what is your business telling you about the economy right now? How are things going? I mean, you're really sort of connected to sort of the fundamental facets of the global economy, right?

Yeah, yeah. Look, it's a great question, and it's one we spend a lot of time debating in. At some point as leaders, we have to follow the data in front of us. And we've built a lot of sensing tools between the growth of our pipeline, our backlog, our order book, and really try to see ahead statistically. And everything we're seeing out our window is still good. Everything that's going on, if you read the news, tells you that you ought to at least be careful as you look forward, and of course, we're trying to be responsible and we're trying to be appropriately cautious. But our order book was up high single digits at the end of the year. In Q1, it grew sequentially. Q2, things are still progressing very well. So everything we see says that demand is still pretty resilient, and we're still in a pretty strong evolving industrial cycle.

Are you benefiting from this adoption of AI and data centers, and if so, how?

Yeah, look, AI started out with what we can use as consumers. Think ChatGPT that gives us information. But we talk a lot about how AI impacts the physical world, and the way you get from AI to the physical world is us, because you ultimately have to transmit motion, you have to affect motion, you have to impact that. And to make that real, you think about robotics, automation, factory automation. Ultimately, at some point, humanoids. That is all impacted by AI. And when you just think in time horizons, the here and now, the factory, the warehouse of today, the warehouse of today is starting to be autonomous, automated, even dark without personnel in it. Well, that same warehouse now needs to be far more reliable than it was before when it had people watching the equipment and they were able to tune it and adjust it. A rail car, for example, for freight or mining in Australia now, it's part of a long train and it goes with a locomotive, although that's not manned. So it's an autonomous train as well. That again needs to be far more reliable. So the bar has raised for reliability on our existing products because there are less humans involved when they're being used. Automation and robotics creates the next generation of growth. And then ultimately, Horizon3, things like humanoids will be the next frontier for us that we're excited about.

Humanoids, all right. And electrification as well?

Electrification as well, and you mentioned earlier, power generation. So obviously, utilities and power generations is kind of primary effect, secondary. So the first effect, if you build a data center, you need a road to get to the data center, you need to dig the ground to do it. So the off-highway market benefits from that. So the large customers that produce excavators, bulldozers need more from us. So that creates demand. The data center itself has gas turbines that also have a lot of moving components, have gearboxes, have other things that require components. So we do participate. We're not as much inside the data center, but everything leading up to the data center, whether it's the fact that it needs more infrastructure, whether it's the fact that it needs more utilities, that all benefits our business.

And what is your revenue global footprint look like? Are you only in the U.S.? I think you mentioned Australia though, right?

Yeah. No, we talk about ourselves as a multinational company. The revenue, the actual mathematics that we've got, $4.5 billion, $4.7 billion of revenue, about $1 billion in Europe, about three in the U.S., and then the rest outside. So really between U.S. and Europe, 75%, and then 25% in Asia and Africa. But we are very multinational. We are where our customers are. So if you are in mining, which we have a very heavy presence in mining, the only way you can be there is you have to be in South Africa, you have to be in Australia, you have to be in New Zealand, you have to be in the southern cone of Latin America, and also in the U.S. and Canada. But it's very much a footprint that looks like that. You can't be a single-region supplier and be credible. And we're very fortunate to have that kind of footprint.

Right. I think that you recently raised your financial targets for this year and going through to 2028. Is that due only to this increase in demand that you talk about, or are you also driving more efficiency as well?

We're doing both. Both, so certainly, the demand has evolved and has gotten more robust than it's been in the last couple of years. But we had recently an Investor Day where we laid our strategy, and we talked about our strategy being "elevate to outperform." That's the tagline we've used to roll out our strategy. But really, at a very basic simple level, there's three levers that we're pulling to deliver our financial targets. The first is the portfolio itself. So we're looking at the portfolio. What businesses do we have? What do we want more of? And what I said earlier, if we wouldn't buy it, then why are we owning it? So there's that filter, if we've made a couple of decisions already to exit certain businesses because of that. So that has helped our performance as well because those businesses were mixing us down. So portfolio is one piece. Then there's the market piece, which is what market sectors are we uniquely positioned to win? I mentioned to you earlier mining as an example. So really looking at, are we where the customers are? And how do we double down to win there versus spread the peanut butter. And then the third one, which was the surprise for me when I joined, the company has gone, as I mentioned earlier, from a bearing supplier to all these acquisitions. All these acquisitions, almost with no exception, are single-region acquisitions and companies at the time of acquisition. So this is, think of this as a bucket that we can keep going back to of self-help. We can pick these one at a time, prioritize them, and take them copy-paste to new regions from where they were. Some are North America businesses that don't have much European footprint. Some are European businesses that don't have much North American footprint. So it gives us a growth vector. So when you combine the three is when you get to the growth algorithm that we laid out that really allows us, we committed to financial targets that every one of them is an all-time record for the company.

But you know, when you talk about this global part of that strategy, Lucian, I thought there was this great backlash against globalism. No one's doing any global things anymore.

That's right. That's right, no, and it's an excellent question, and that's why when we talked about it at investor day, we talked about not being a global company but being a multinational company. And I think there is a difference between global and multinational. You have to be local everywhere. And so we have, for a company that's sub $5 billion, we have 114 factories around the world. That's a lot. We have 30 engineering centers around the world. That's also significant. And could we be, in theory, more efficient having fewer and bigger? Yes, but then we wouldn't be local everywhere. We wouldn't be where the customer is. So what we can do now is innovate with the customer, where the customer is, from prototype all the way to commercial product. It's also a gift when you're talking about tariffs, because most of what we sell, 85-plus percent, is sold in the same region it is made.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about tariffs. Thank you for getting to that. You have this company that's over 100 years old, 125 years old. So you have this legacy and a legacy mentality, which can be positive or negative. So how do you balance this legacy mindset with trying to drive change forward in your organization?

Yeah, that's one thing I have to admit. I asked myself when the name first came up, I said, "Okay, 125-year company." And you always look at, what has this company already done? And this company started out as a taper roller bearing company for the automotive market. There was a time when, in America, cars didn't ride on bearings, they rode on Timken's. And so there was also a time in our history where we said, "You can't make a good bearing if you don't make your own steel." That wasn't, but you know, better ingredients, better pizza, same thing about bearings. That was the philosophy. And then 12 years ago, we spun off the steel business. So that was a huge change in mindset. Then about 10 years ago, we started on this acquisitive track to acquire 14 different acquisitions consecutively in other market. We exited a billion dollars worth of automotive. So we went from cars ride on Timken to today, we're still 7% automotive OEM, and we'll be 3.5% in a couple of years. So I look back and I say, "Wow, this company has done a lot of transformation." Actually, the hard part's almost behind us now. We have to take the pieces. We have to package them a little better. We have to put our story to our customers together in a more compelling way. We have to take advantage of our regional growth opportunities. But the transformation that we've had has been substantial. We've got more to do, but it's the same muscle that we've used. And this company has a tremendous culture. It's a very, very good culture. It's one I'm very proud of, and I wanna do everything I can to keep.

All right, sort of continuing on that, I mean, you became CEO, what, last fall in September, I believe.

That's right.

So since then, the stock has been rocking. I'm sure that's all you. But are you looking to really change, or are you sort of taking what came before you? I mean, it's a little bit like the last question, but I mean, did you have to come in with a completely new playbook?

Yeah, I think I came in with maybe a fresh view to what we have. And yes, I did come in with a different playbook, but it's a tried-and-true, very basic playbook. So one of the things I told my team is, the bad news is there probably won't be a Harvard Business case written about Timken because everything we're doing has been done before. But what we're doing has worked every time it's been done correctly. And so it's on us as leaders to execute. It's that same simple disciplined playbook. We talked about 80/20, really applying the Pareto principle to everything that we do. That's a very tried-and-true method that a lot of high-performing companies have built. But really, it's, you know, I would like for us, and that's my vision for the company, to be known not only for the products that we make, but for our operating discipline, and great companies who are compounders, who create value consistently, like a Danaher, like an ITW, frankly sometimes, even people who own them might be hard-pressed to tell you what they make, but they know they're good stewards of the portfolio, they know they deliver on their numbers, and they know that they've developed an operating model and a cadence that will deliver day in, day out. And that's what we wanna do.

Is it too late to buy the stock? I mean, now that it's already gone up a lot?

Well, it's never too late. And I can tell you we are, so we're very balanced for our capital allocation, and that includes stock buyback. So we believe in ourselves.

Yeah, okay, and so some of this management strategy, did you pick some of this up or learn some of this at Honeywell? I know you worked there for a while.

Yeah, I mean, I really tried to not only look back at my career, but also leverage members of our board who work in other companies and really try to take the best of everything. I've never had a lot of pride of authorship and really try to just learn best practices from everywhere. Every company is a little bit different. Obviously, Honeywell is an outstanding company, and there's a lot to learn about how they do things. But there are other great companies as well. We've retained, so for example, when we did 80/20, we retained a firm called Strategex. They're the best out there to do 80/20. That's who we got, and we're leveraging their expertise. So we're trying to take really proven, simple discipline operating models that have worked before and adapt them to ourselves.

And final question. My understanding is you studied at Wharton, have an MBA there and also studied chemistry. Where did you grow up and how did that inform you along with your education in terms of your leadership?

Yes, so originally, I was born in Romania. I left Romania at a very young age, at 19, came to the U.S., studied as you said chemistry, and then went to graduate school at University of Florida, then joined the chemical industry. And then from there, I went back to school again and did my MBA at University of Pennsylvania at Wharton in finance. So it's been really a very, very good run so far, and I'm very grateful for it. I've been very, very fortunate to have a variety of experiences. But I think what that teaches you is really only one thing, which is you got to adapt. And what I've learned in college is to learn, because ultimately, I no longer use the chemistry that I learned. I use some of the finance to ask good questions. But in today's world, the most important skill a leader can have is ability to learn, be agile, adapt, because, you know, I wanna meet the person who predicted the pandemic in 2019, or who predicted tariffs in 2017, or geopolitics. We can't predict the future. So that means we have to be nimble, we have to be open-minded, we have to learn, and most importantly, we have to build flexibility and resiliency in what we do. That's why we keep the 100-plus factories. That's why we develop a muscle on how we flex those quickly when the world changes, because the world will change and will continue to change.

Lucian Boldea, CEO of Timken, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

This is "At Barron's." I'm Andy Serwer. We'll catch you next time.